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Opinion: (Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, The Guardian): “The world tiptoed closer to the apocalypse on Tuesday as scientists moved the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to the zero hour.

“The symbolic clock now stands at five minutes to midnight, the scientists said, because of a collective failure to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, act on climate change, or find safe and sustainable sources of energy – as exemplified by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“The clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, has been gauging our proximity to global disaster since 1947, using the potent image of a clock counting down the minutes to destruction. Until Tuesday afternoon, the clock had been set at six minutes to midnight.

“The Bulletin was founded by the scientists who helped build America’s atomic bomb, and the primary focus of their concerns remains the danger of a nuclear conflagration.

“But a number of the scientists who took part in the deliberations said they were also dismayed by a growing trend to disregard science.”

My Comment:Politicians do not listen to scientists, and billionaires do even less so. Science itself is to blame because they started to sell scientific discoveries to the rich, thus giving science, its fruit, which is a public good, to those eager to seize power and wealth. Even Plato and Aristotle warned that scientific achievements should be concealed from egoists hungry for power and wealth.[66428]